Latest News - Page 1711

There has been quite a lot of chatter about whether 5G technology that is currently being rolled out specific areas around the globe is harmful to humans. Here's what Elon Musk thinks.

A fan of Elon Musk, Shawn Bechard, recently took to Twitter to ask SpaceX and Tesla founder his thoughts surrounding the rumored dangers of 5G. Bechard asked Musk to "put my fears to rest" about using 5G and, more specifically, if we are "saturating ourselves in more exposure to EMF radiation and at higher frequencies?". Elon Musk replied to Bechard with the above Tweet.

Musk isn't an expert in 5G, but it's still nonetheless reassuring that someone as smart and successful as Musk is in his respective fields of space travel, automation, and global internet ventures is dismissing claims that 5G is harmful. As 5G becomes more accessible to the general public, we will no doubt hear studies that both support and dismiss the claim that 5G is a danger. Prepare for the future.

The showrunner for Netflix's incredible Witcher TV show has explained during a podcast how she designed The Witcher world and where she drew her inspiration from.

The showrunner, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, appeared on the 85th episode of the 'Writer Experience' podcast and sat down for a lengthy chat about how she wrote the hit series. Throughout the chat, Hissrich was asked that even though the Netflix show is based on the book series, did she take anything out of the CD Projekt Red video games. To the surprise of the audience, she replied with yes.

Here's what she said when asked the question, "You know, when I first - I'm not a gamer myself, but when I first took on the project, I found a friend of mine, Matt Owens, who is a huge gamer and I basically insisted that he let me play. And then very quickly, I realized I stopped. So I watched him play and drank some beers. And I took in the visuals of the world. And what I will say is that, that's probably the biggest thing I took from the game".

A new paper has been published revealing that researchers have created a new way that beams of light can communicate with each other.

This discovery has led researchers to explore a brand new way of computing. So, how does it work? In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Kalaichelvi Saravanamuttu, an associate professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at McMaster says that using light beams and hydrogel developed by the Harvard team, the researchers were able to successfully prove the gel is "intelligent".

The hydrogels composition is composed of light-responsive molecules whose structures are altered once light is shone through it. This change in the gel gives it the capabilities of being able to contain light beams without 'bleeding' and the ability to transmit information from one source to another. Usually, as a beam of light travels, it broadens, but the gel is able to contain it into an almost tube-like structure.

Stem-cell research is pushing the boundaries into what is ethical and what is not. Questions have been raised as to whether or not human-animal hybrids should be approved under the guise of 'research'.

Back in late July 2019, Japan lifted the ban on the controversial stem-cell research enabling the University of Tokyo to conduct the first human-animal hybrid research. The research attempted to grow human call in rat and mouse embryos before it was brought to full term in a surrogate animal.

So why would scientists want to do this? Eventually, scientists and researchers would like to take stem-cell research to the point where they can grow human organs inside other animals. If this was achieved, then humans that require organ transplants will be able to receive those organs much faster than waiting for a human source.

Any drone that is deemed unauthorized can be shot out of the sky by defense officials, but maybe this course of action isn't the best choice.

A new contract has been signed by the Department of Defence and a company called Fortem Technology. Above, we have a video from Fortem Technology which displays a new way of disabling unauthorized drones. This new strategy is led by what the company calls DroneHunter, which is a larger drone that uses a radar to track unauthorized drones, and once it has found them, it captures them with a net.

Capturing drone mid-air has many benefits overblowing them out of the sky. Defense officials will be able to retrieve the drone and examine it for further details and hopefully, be able to figure out who the perpetrator behind the drone is. Defense One says that the Pentagon and the general US military is spending millions of dollars investing in this new technology.

If you are like me, when you hear the word 'modern art', a bad taste appears in your mouth accompanied by the mental images of bits of metal being bent in strange directions.

But what about modern art in the sense of basically trolling Google Maps? I can get on board for that, and I think Simon Weckert can as well. Above we have a video from Simon Weckert, who is an artist living in Berlin, Germany. He decided to take a wagon, 99 smartphones, and a sense of humor with him for a walk around the streets of Berlin.

What happened was quite hilarious, due to all of the phones having their location on Google Maps picked up that there were high levels of traffic in the area. The video shows Weckert walking down the street with his little wagon full of smartphones and the Google Maps streets going from green to dark red. This idea is basically a hack for Google Maps, and could maybe even make your commute to work a lot faster if you decide to invest in a lot of smartphones.

NASA is moving full steam ahead into creating a lunar base that would essentially act as a launchpad for future expeditions to Mars.

The U.S. House of Representatives has recently proposed a new bipartisan bill that would limit NASA's experiments that can be conducted on the Moon's surface. This new bill states, "Any lunar in-situ resource utilization activities and shall not be included in the Moon to Mars Program and shall be budgeted separately from the Moon to Mars Program." What this means is that any Moon-specific research experiments that aren't directly linked to achieving humans on Mars could be considered not worth it.

This bill, called H.R. 5666, has stirred scientists raising their concerns towards its context and general goal. A group of scientists, engineers, resource management experts from 12 different states all signed an open letter sent to NASA that explains how this bill would be impeding the goal of making Mars habitable. Here's a small paragraph from the letter, "The integration of lunar (and Martian) resource utilization is vital for the sustainable and cost-effective human space exploration program beyond Earth orbit, as it is critical that we learn to "live off the land" beyond the Earth."

Today PlatinumGames put up a new teaser site called Platinum 4, which confirms that the studio has four major games in development. The first project is The Wonderful 101 remastered on Switch, PS4, and PC, a crowd-funded project that's already smashed its goal.

PlatinumGames is evolving, and plans to deliver something fans have been asking for for a long time: The Wonderful 101 on modern systems. The developers are self-publishing The Wonderful 101 remastered on Switch, PC, and PlayStation 4, and will use Kickstarter to fund the project.

The remaster has a bunch of rewards, one of which is getting blocked by Hideki Kamiya on Twitter. What a privilege! Individual digital copies of the game run at roughly $35, whereas a physical version costs about $40.

UPDATE: PlatinumGames confirms the 4 is in reference to how many projects it's currently working on.

PlatinumGames today launched Platinum 4, a mysterious teaser website that has lots of implications.

Platinum fans across the world are buzzing about the new site and what it could mean. It's possibly a throwback to 2002's Capcom Five, indicating PlatinumGames currently has up to four major games in development (Astral Chain sequels, a new IP, Bayonetta 3, and Babylon's Fall).

A new job listing gives an idea of what Bungie's next IP will be like, and it sounds kind of outrageous.

Bungie's next IP might be quite different than the deep lore and serious space heroes vs evil darkness tone of Destiny. It could be a lot more like Borderlands with its slapstick humor. A new art director job listing directly mentions a new Bungie IP, and calls for fanciful humor rather than Destiny's drama or compelling story beats.

The Nintendo Switch is about to turn 3 years old, and apparently nearing the mid-point of its hardware cycle.

In a recent Q&A investor's meeting, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa says the Switch is currently in the middle of its life cycle. This means the Switch could have a total lifespan of 6-7 years, maybe more with long-term software sales. The company will use this vital maturation period to double-down on software development to continually move sales and carry the system farther into its life cycle. Nintendo says it's "aggressively investing" in games.

Note: The following translations were made in Google Translate, so they may be crude.

Nintendo isn't worried about new next-gen consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X interrupting Switch hardware or software sales.

The Switch isn't a replacement system, but a complementary one. It lives alongside consoles and PC gaming by offering exclusive access to first-party Nintendo best-sellers and the portability of a higher-end handheld. The NPD Group notes that 40% of Switch owners in the U.S. also own a PS4 and Xbox One, proving the Switch can thrive in between the major console wars.

Nintendo doesn't expect this to change when the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X release in holiday 2020. Next-gen won't take a lot of attention away from the Switch, especially now that Nintendo is doubling-down on first-party software development.

ASUS has just joined GALAX in the white graphics card market with its new GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER ROG STRIX White OC, with a super slick style that you just need to feast your eyes on below:

As you can see the entire graphics card and its cooling shroud is white, while underneath the PCB is black. So ASUS isn't going full-white here but it's pretty damn close. ASUS straps on its triple-fan cooler while keeping its thick 2.7-slot design, while the black PCB underneath is a full-custom job that requires dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

ASUS will be clocking the GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER ROG STRIX White OC at up to 1890MHz Boost, while the 8GB of GDDR6 will be clocked at 15.5Gbps. There's no clue on pricing just yet, but expect it to be a little more expensive than a traditional ROG STRIX member of the RTX 2080 SUPER family from ASUS.

Super Bowl 2020 is now over and done, and while the game was undoubtedly amazing to watch, so were the extremely expensive ads.

Millions of eyes were glued to Super Bowl 2020, which means it was extremely expensive for companies to get a slot at the half-time-show commercial break. But for the companies that did get a slot, they didn't waste it as many of the commercials that were seen contained celebrities to peak potential customers' interests.

A full list has been provided in the entirety of this article of all of the technology-related Super Bowl ads. We have commercials from companies such as Amazon, Audi, Dashlane, Facebook, Google, Hyundai Microsoft, Pringles (Rick and Morty), SodaStream, Squarespace, and T-Mobile.

During Super Bowl 2020, we saw a bunch of different advertisements, but one that caught many Rick and Morty fans' eyes was the Pringles ad.

The Pringles ad that was shown at the big game was from a few days ago and showed a bunch of robotic Morty's chanting a Pringle's mantra. It also showed Rick breaking the forth-wall and realizing that he was in a Pringles commercial. He says that he and Summer must have been taken over while they were sleeping.

Now, the official Rick and Morty Twitter account have released a short video showcasing that the new Rick and Morty 'Pickle Rick' flavor will be ready "soon". The video depicts a production line of hundreds of 'Pickle Rick' flavored Pringles. At the moment, it's still unknown how this new flavor is going to taste, and while pickle-flavored Pringles don't sound fantastic, I'm still excited to give them a shot!

Netflix has been ruling the roost of streaming platforms for quite a while now, but as time goes on, the biggest streaming platform has some competitors plotting in the slums.

Those competitors are Amazon's Prime Video, Disney's Disney Plus, Hulu, Apple and HBO Max. As more and more people are convinced to head on over to other streaming platforms that aren't Netflix, Netflix has to think of strategies to keep new customers as well as keep their old ones. According to a new report from DataDads, Netflix is spending five times more money on content for its platform than it did five years ago.

DataDads acquired this knowledge from Netflix's recent earnings report, which revealed that the company is planning on spending $20 billion new content for 2020. This figure includes new shows, licensing deals, programming, and more. During 2018, Netflix spent $12 billion on programming new content, and back in 2015, the streaming service only spent $4.5 billion.

Just a few days ago, GMC announced its new Cybertruck competitor, the Hummer EV. During today's Super Bowl, a new advertisement about the coming electric truck was shown, and NBA superstar LeBron James was spotted in it.

Above, you can watch the 30-second advertisement on the official GMC YouTube Channel, and it really emphasizes the fact that the Hummer EV will be a 'silent' truck. The advertisement starts with the 1,000 horsepower video we saw in the first teaser trailer, then transitions to 11,500 pound-feet of torque being 'silent', then a showcase of 0-60mph in three seconds being 'silent' and finally it's 'dominance' being 'silent'.

LeBron is spotted in the last part of the ad, where we see him dunk on a basketball ring and small the glass in the backboard. GMC says that the "quiet revolution is coming" and that the Hummer EV will be all-electric, have zero emissions, and have zero limits. The ad also shows that Hummer EV will be available in Fall 2021 and that a showcase will be held on the 20th of May, 2020.

Today is the very first day in an astounding 909 years that is a palindrome. If you don't know what that word means, don't worry, you aren't alone -- I was exactly the same until I Googled it.

So what is a palindrome? Google says, "a word, phrase, or sequence that reads the same backwards as forwards". Examples of this would include madam or nurses. So, now that we know what a palindrome is, today being February 2nd is the first day in 909 years that is a palindrome as the date reads in month, date, year: 02/02/2020, Date, month, year: 02/02/2020 and finally year, month date: 2020/02/02.

The last day that was a palindrome day was 11/11/1111, and the next palindrome day won't be happening for another 101 years. If today's date already wasn't enough number satisfaction for you -- today is also the 33rd day of the year, and there are 333 days to go. I don't know what celebrations happen for this day (besides the Super Bowl), but I'd imagine it would have something to do with zero's and two's. Happy palindrome day!

The problem with smaller drones these days is the fact that they can't stay up in the air for long periods of time. What if that problem can be solved by listening to mother nature?

Researchers and scientists from Brown University and EPFL have released a video that shows off a new design for smaller drones. This new design is called "a bio-inspired separated flow wing" and allows for the drone to have turbulence resilience and enables high endurance flight.

It is estimated that a small 100g drone will be able to stay in flight for around 3 hours with this new design, which is about four times what a normal drone of this same size would be able to achieve. At the moment, the new drone design has only been tested in a wind tunnel, but the team behind the design has patented it and plans on improving upon it. For more information about how this new drone design works, check out the Brown.edu website here.

A California man is facing some serious charges as he has pleaded guilty to hacking Nintendo servers while also possessing child pornography.

21-year-old Palmdale, California man, Ryan Hernandez, has pleaded guilty to charges laid against him for both hacking Nintendo systems and stealing company secrets as well as downloading and possessing child pornography. According to the US Department of Justice website, Hernandez used a "phishing technique" to steal the credentials of a Nintendo employee, which gained him access to Nintendo's servers, where he downloaded confidential files.

The files contained explicit information about Nintendo's coming console, upcoming games, developer tools, and more. The FBI contacted Hernandez back in October 2017, and gave him a warning, Hernandez promised to stop any further hacking attempts and acknowledged that he understood the consequences if he continued to do so. Hernandez continued his malicious online activity throughout 2018 and 2019, continuing to hack Nintendo servers and bragging about his wrongdoings on Twitter and Discord.